Another Disney film has made the journey from screen to stage. This time, it looks a bit more promising – mainly because this particular film was a live-action musical in the first place. That’s right, Paper Mill Playhouse will be premiering the Newsies musical! Personally, I’m quite apprehensive, in a good way. I mean, remember what happened when Disney brought The Little Mermaid to Broadway?
American Idiot‘s Broadway album just won best show album on the Grammy’s.
Dammit.
Completely undeserved, in my book. The album that SHOULD have won is Scottsboro Boys’.
Continuing my baritones working in the theatre series, it is my pleasure to introduce Ron Raines! One of the most celebrated baritones working in theatre today, Raines, 61, has appeared in such musicals as The Unsinkable Molly Brown, South Pacific, Annie, Kiss Me Kate, Can-Can, The King and I, Brigadoon, Oklahoma!, Carousel, Follies, Guys and Dolls, A Little Night Music, Kismet, Man of la Mancha, the long-running Chicago revival, and the 1983 Broadway revival of Showboat, in which he played the character of Gaylord Ravenal.
His upcoming projects include a concert with Marc Kudisch, “The Lower Depths: In Defense of the Baritone Voice” and the Kennedy Center production of Follies, opposite Bernadette Peters.
Here’s his BroadwayWorld.com profile: http://broadwayworld.com/bwidb/sections/people/index.php?var=4303
And his official website. http://ronrainesonline.com
Finally, here’s some videos of Mr. Raines’ wonderful baritone-bass voice.
As a bonus, here’s a preview of the next featured baritone.
It’s time to start a new blog series! For the next month or so, I’ll be featuring a baritone performer who has made it to Broadway. First up is the man who is arguably the most famous musical theater baritone-bass in the world, Brian Stokes Mitchell!
As demonstrated by the songs above, the man has ridiculous range. From bona fide bass all the way up to falsetto, he can hit all the notes, but his natural voice is a silky smooth baritone-bass. The Tony®-winner (for Kiss Me, Kate; he was nominated for his work in Ragtime and Man of la Mancha) knew from the age of six that he wanted to be an actor. His first job was a sizable part in the first installment of Roots: The Next Generation. He played a recurring role on Trapper John, MD before starting to do voice-over work and compose film scores. In 1988, he made his Broadway debut in the musical Mail. The show didn’t last long, but he won one of that year’s Theater World awards for Broadway newcomers. A few years later, none other than David Merrick approached him to star in a revival of Oh, Kay!. The show only lasted a few months, but it was where he met his wife, Alysson Tucker. He followed Kay with two replacement roles, taking over for Gregory Hines in Jelly’s Last Jam and Anthony Crivello in Kiss of the Spider Woman.
His real breakout performance came in 1998’s Ragtime, opposite Audra McDonald. He’s been dubbed “The Last Leading Man” by the New York Times, and is in great demand among the nation’s concert halls. His career is the thing every baritone dreams of.
I was talking with Linda (@PataphysicalSci) on Twitter the other day. It started as a discussion about “American Idiot” (she liked it, I hated it), and eventually turned to the qualities of a good musical. We decided that the subject was way too big to properly discuss on Twitter, so… here I am.
Before I say anything else, here’s a definition you need to keep in mind. A musical is a form of entertainment that has three distinct parts: a score (original or otherwise), a basic story, and a book that joins the first two parts together.
I want to go on the record again saying that I despise Idiot as a Broadway musical. Here’s my basic view:
American Idiot is pure spectacle. It seeks to win over audiences by overwhelming them with visuals and catchy music with a driving beat. In short, it has almost none of the qualities I believe a show must have in order to be considered a “true” musical.
What are those qualities? I’m glad you asked.
First and foremost, I believe that a musical’s sole purpose – Broadway or otherwise – is to entertain audiences by providing them with a story that they can empathize with. If an audience is unable to become caught up in the story, then the show they are watching has one strike against it.
The “story” part of my definition covers other aspects of a musical I consider essential. The most important of these subcategories are the characters. A musical’s characters give the show its voice. They draw the audience in, and ideally don’t let them go. For example, the movie Auntie Mame, starring Rosalind Russell, doesn’t have a particularly exciting or original premise (a straight-laced boy meets his eccentric aunt for the first time). What draws the viewers in are the characters. They are so well crafted that the viewer has no choice but to become intimately involved with their every emotion. Even though they know that they should be rooting for the boy to be free of his overprotective aunt, her character has been explored so thoroughly that the kid becomes the bad guy for daring to try to leave his loving aunt. If a show has prominent characters that aren’t explored to the extent they need to be, then it’s strike two.
Finally, a show must have a good book. Without a vehicle to blend together story and songs, a show becomes a train wreck. In all of Broadway history, there has only been one show that did not suffer because of a poor book – CATS. The book writer’s job is to make sense of the story. If he or she can’t do it properly, the show is almost guaranteed to fail.
So, here’s where I find fault with American Idiot.
As I said before, it’s pure spectacle. It puts visual and music elements in a prominent place, at the expense of characters and plot. Although the characters have names, all we really get to know about them is that most of them are chauvinistic punks. Director Michael Mayer takes credit for co-writing the book with Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong. The problem with that is that the book consists primarily of one or two monologues spoken to the audience by the main character. The plot is never explicitly stated – its only implied, and while that may (sort of) work on a Green Day album, it does not translate well to the Broadway stage.
American Idiot is one of those things that would work very well as a concert piece or a Vegas attraction, but not so much as a full-blown musical.
Answering questions I’m pretty sure I’ll get:
No, I do not like CATS.
No, I never did like Green Day.
Yes, I may be a wee bit biased.
No, that does not change a thing.
EDITED:
Linda brought up a good point in her comment. When I mentioned CATS had a poor book, I meant it in the sense of “almost no book at all”. It, like American Idiot, has a plot that is mostly implied, rather than explicitly stated.
Who holds the world record for having the most people hear him sing live? It’s a baritone. His name was George Beverly Shea, and during his lifetime 230 million people heard him sing in the flesh. That’s more than Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Frank Sinatra — combined. When you think about how many people heard those legendary entertainers — all names much bigger than Shea’s — sing live, you know the guy’s voice has to be special.
Either that, or he led worship at Billy Graham’s revivals, right before Graham preached his sermon.
It’s become apparent over recent years that, more and more, baritones and basses are being relegated to the lowest rung of the musical theater ladder. The trend may have started with the emergence of the pop/rock musical (think Jesus Christ Superstar). Baritones have a hard time singing the notes usually called for in those type of shows, after all. Personally, though, I feel that baritone’s demotion began with the decline of the showtune.
Think about it for a second. The showtune really had its start with Rodgers and Hammerstein. The duo wrote their shows with a baritone and a soprano in the leads, and an alto and tenor as major supporting characters. One of the reasons they did so was because the vocal extremes – baritone and soprano – can better handle belting a catchy melody. In most a capella groups, the baritones and basses are the ones that give a song its beat, singing melody so the higher harmony parts have a vocal anchor.
Baritones first started to wink out of prominence when Sondheim began composing his first shows, reaching uncharted territory musically. Of all his shows, only three – Sweeney Todd, Follies, and A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum – prominently feature a baritone. The opportunities for non-chorus baritone roles began to decline, especially after Andrew Lloyd Webber came on the scene. As originally performed, none of his shows have a baritone featured. After Superstar came Starlight Express, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Woman in White, and Whistle Down the Wind, all of which had great tenor and soprano roles, but virtually none for baritones or altos.
Every so often, the odd show with a good baritone part would come along (think The Secret Garden or Les Miserables), but for the better part of fifteen years, there were more baritone parts being handed out in Disney animated musicals than on Broadway.
But I’m getting sidetracked. The question I wanted to ask here was how, exactly, did baritones fall so far, so fast?
I believe there are three primary reasons.
1. They allowed it.
Not a single baritone looked up and said, “Hey, there’s not a single good baritone-led show on Broadway. Maybe I should compose one.” Of all the major composers, only one, Frank Wildhorn, offered any decent parts for a baritone voice.
2. They began to be cast as villains.
Although Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg wrote several great parts for baritones, almost all of them were villains. Even Wildhorn went with a baritone villain in The Scarlet Pimpernel. In The Lion King, the main villain, Scar, was a baritone. These and other shows reinforced the idea that being a baritone was a bad thing, at least in the musical theater world. Gifted musical theater performers like Terrence Mann, once identified with this type of role, could not get out of it.
3. Pop/rock musicals.
Almost all of these are written for tenors. Go and see one. I challenge you to find a baritone outside of the chorus.
I’ve run out of time, but not out of ideas. I’ll be back in a few days to finish this up.
I was browsing the Internet a few days ago, looking for good baritone-friendly stories to share, when I came across one that exceeded my wildest expectations.
A Brooklyn man trained to be an announcer before falling on hard times. About a year ago, he took to the streets of Columbus, Ohio, offering his “God-given voice” in exchange for spare change. Recently, one of the motorists he sang for took a video of him and posted it on YouTube. The video went viral, and the man got invited on a local radio station. As soon as he did, offers started pouring in – including one from the Cleveland Cavaliers, who offered him a full-time job. To sweeten the deal, they even threw in a house!
I seriously doubt anything approaching this would happen to a tenor.
Original story is here
In professional theater, most baritones tend to tolerate the way that their profession treats them. It’s really depressing, actually. And then someone like Marc Kudisch — thrice nominated for a Tony — comes along. He has a concert planned with Ron Raines later this month. Guess what he’s calling it? The Lower Depths: In Defense of the Baritone”. Not only that, but he did an interview with TheaterMania.com to promote it. In the interview, he says some things that had me practically giddy with joy, including:
I was looking in the Encyclopedia Britannica at the definition of baritone. I was insulted. I looked at other definitions and I decided that I wanted to redefine the definition of baritone.
I make my own conspiracy theories throughout the course of the evening…. But the truth is we wouldn’t have music today if it wasn’t for baritones. All evening long, I will make points based on the baritones’ point of view. I want people to leave with a newfound appreciation for the baritone and for theater.
To paraphrase Gypsy… Mister Kudisch, I love you!
I was watching Youtube videos the other day, and discovered that there is a freaking baritone in the cast of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson! The character of “John Calhoun” has a strong baritone voice! Ladies and gents, there is hope for Broadway!
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